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Souvenir of the Russian Opera Season

Depicting the Russian ballerinas Anna Pavlova and Ida Rubinstein dancing "Cléopâtre", Kees van Dongen's painting commemorates a key event in cultural history: the 1909 inaugural season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets "Russes" in Paris. The artist loved the modern and the exotic in life and in art; the brilliant colours, stylized curves, and rhythmic composition of his painting evoke the sensual languor of the dance and the exuberance of night life in Paris.

[1] Art dealer Daniel Henry Kahnweiler wrote to the NGC’s Research Curator Myron Laskin, Jr.: “The picture by van Dongen, reproduced in your Bulletin of 11/1968 has belonged to me. I bought it from van Dongen in 1909 with two others of the same ballet and it had my number 302. It was lent in May 1912 to the ‘Rheinischer Kunstsalon’ at Cologne (Feldmann), a gallery which disappeared after the first war. It went in April 1919 to the Gallery Alfred Flechtheim at Düsseldorf. I do not know to whom they sold it.” [Letter, dated April 20, 1971, NGC curatorial file].

[2] See note [1]. The painting was shown at Galerie Alfred Flechtheim in a 1919 exhibition on Van Dongen’s women [Kees van Dongen, Frauen. Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Düsseldorf, October 5-18, 1919, cat. no. 9 in the section devoted to Van Dongen's work, titled Russisches Ballett ‘Cleopatra’]. In 1922 Flechtheim lent the painting to two exhibitions in Germany. It was shown first by the Kestner Gesellschaft of Hanover [48. Sonderausstellung Meisterwerke Deutscher Kunst aus Hannoverschem Privatbesitz. Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, February 5 to March 1, 1922, cat. no. 41, titled Le Ballet Russe]. A label of the Kestner Gesellschaft with the number 1749 can be found on the stretcher of the painting. From Hanover it went to a show on the work of Van Dongen organised by the Hansa Werkstätten in Hamburg [letter from the Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, Germany, dated November 24, 1969, to Myron Laskin, Jr., NGC curatorial file]. The work was for sale at this time, as it was included on a price list that Flechtheim sent to the Kestner Gesellschaft on January 20, 1922 [NLA HA Dep. 100 Nr. 18, folder 130, Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, Hanover].

[4] The painting was included in an exhibition at the Musée des Art Décoratifs, Paris in 1939. The catalogue mentions Bernard Poissonnier as lender [Ballets Russes de Diaghilew. Musée des Art Décoratifs, Paris, April/May 1939, cat. no. 358, titled Souvenir de la saison d’Opéras russes, 1909. Ida Rubinstein et Pavlova]. Poissonnier was a Parisian collector of French modern art who owned works by Apollinaire, Gris and Picasso, among others.

[5] The painting carries a stamp by the Galerie Rive Gauche, Paris on the stretcher. In 1969, R.A. Augustinci of the Galerie Rive Gauche informed Myron Laskin, Jr. that he remembered the painting passing through his hands more than twenty years ago, but neither recalled where he had acquired it, nor to whom he had sold it [letter, dated March 24, 1969, NGC curatorial file].

[7] Jacques Dubourg likely acquired the painting in November 1962 at the sale of the Galerie Motte, where he acted as an assistant to Mme Motte [see note 6]. In 1965, the painting was shown in the exhibition The Heroic Years. Paris 1908–1914 in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas. The catalogue of this exhibition was never completed nor published, but the archives of the museum records the Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris, as the lender of the work [letter to Myron Laskin, Jr., dated March 5, 1970, by C. Cabanné Smith of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, NGC curatorial file].